


If This Is Rain Let It Fall On Me and Drown Me

by Brangwen



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 09:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brangwen/pseuds/Brangwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You disappeared without a word, with Dominick sodding Cobb, and you didn't come back, and I had all of your clothes and your books and your paintings at home, I had to box them up and put you out of my life like a dead person had lived in that house with me, and I didn't know why.  And the next time I saw you, you turned around and walked away like we'd never met.  And I <em>still</em> don't bloody know why. I never wanted you to leave, never."</p>
            </blockquote>





	If This Is Rain Let It Fall On Me and Drown Me

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Billy Bragg's ["Must I Paint You A Picture](http://www.billybragg.co.uk/music/album.php?albumID=16&songID=43)?"

"Eames, this is Arthur, our point man," said their extractor. "I believe you've worked together before?"

"Ah, yes," said Eames.  "Arthur.  The little black cloud in a suit."

Arthur's narrow, handsome face, which had been carefully schooled into a neutral expression, went rigid with fury. His faintly crooked mouth thinned, the proffered hand fell limply to his side, and he turned on his heel and stalked away without a word. 

Thanh, the extractor, was livid.  "If I'd known there was bad blood between the two of you, I'd have called someone else, Eames.  What in God's name --"

Eames' response was succinct.  "Exes."

That job went tits up in a hurry, as Eames could have predicted.  Arthur refused to speak to or look at him, instead producing copious written memoranda whenever he needed to communicate with Eames.  On his part, Eames found it nearly impossible to refrain from sardonic asides, expertly needling Arthur in all of the ways he knew, from long experience, would be the most likely to get under Arthur's skin. 

Thanh shouted, scolded, pleaded, threatened, and finally simply replaced both of them.  Arthur broke his self-imposed silence to hiss "you owe me a job, motherfucker," but otherwise continued to ignore Eames as he swept his laptop and research into a messenger bag and stalked out. 

*****************************

The second time they tried to work the same job after Mal's death was with Cobb extracting and Eames forging, and they only got paid for that one because Cobb was actually as good as everyone said he was and managed to memorize the mark's formulae while running flat-out from a mob.  Arthur, who was supposed to be guarding Cobb's back, had hit his limit and turned his considerable ferocity on Eames instead of the projections, after one particularly well-timed insult.  Slugging Arthur in the face had been incredibly cathartic, and Eames only regretted that it had happened in the dream instead of up top, where Arthur would have had to wear the resulting bruises for weeks.

*****************************

The grapevine informed Eames, later, that Arthur was working exclusively with Cobb, and that they were taking on true bottom-of-the-barrel, unnecessarily dangerous jobs.  Word was that Cobb was looking for any money he could find to pay for his legal defense. Word also was that there was something dangerous on the prowl in Cobb's subconscious.  As a result, most competent dreamworkers, Eames included, refused to take jobs with Cobb and, consequently, with Arthur. 

Eames told himself he didn't care what Arthur did anymore, or who he worked with, or how many chances he took by associating himself with Cobb's rapid downward spiral. 

*****************************

By the time Cobb approached him about Inception, the intervening time and his own considerable curiousity had got the better of his anger.  The thought that this mad endeavor could finally be what sent Cobb home and freed Arthur from that particular millstone pushed him over the edge, and he found himself agreeing to forge for the job. He put in the two weeks in Sydney to study Browning, and then, not without trepidation, greeted Arthur in the Paris warehouse.  He was relieved to find that Arthur was civil, if not exactly friendly.  Eames could work with civil.

He still had a hard time restraining himself from poking Arthur, but Arthur seemed to have developed either better self-control or a sense of humor over the intervening months, and they were both aware that the difficulty of the job required both of their formidable skills and a complete mutual awareness of all necessary information.  An unspoken truce formed, at least for the duration of the job. 

When they learned that not only was Fischer militarized, but that the Somnacin blend would cause them to drop into Limbo if they were killed in the dream, Eames finally allowed himself to drop the pretense that he didn't care what happened to Arthur.  He startled himself by manifesting a grenade launcher to dispatch snipers that were trading fire with Arthur in the first level, and was more startled to hear an errant "darling" coming out of his mouth.  He didn't miss Arthur's dumbfounded reaction to the endearment, but it was neither the time nor the place to get into that. 

On the second level, Arthur almost automatically knelt to assist him with the cannula, and Eames let his candid concern show in his face and voice as he warned Arthur that "security's going to run you down hard."  He was surprised and delighted by Arthur's cheeky response, and was still smiling as he dropped under to the third level. 

He pressed the detonator in the hospital, and his eyes opened briefly on the second level in -- was it an elevator? and _why, Arthur_ , was he _tied up_? - before he came fully awake in his Browning skin on the first level, surrounded by icy water and struggling to escape the van, pulling Fischer behind him. 

The next week felt like the longest of his life.  He had to wear Browning any time Fischer was near, and Fischer clung to him as the only familiar landmark in the continually rainy ( _damn Yusuf_ ) dreamscape.  Fischer wanted to talk about his experience, and his epiphany, and Eames knew that it was his job as much to reinforce the idea they'd planted in his head as it had been to plant it in the first place, but it got to be fucking tedious.  He took to locking himself in Browning's office for hours at a time just so he could drop the forge and be himself, staring into his own unblinking grey eyes and unlined skin in the mirror. Trying not to think about Arthur.

He wondered how the others were doing.  He didn't envy Yusuf for being on the receiving end of Arthur's fury for days at a time, but thought that the doublecrossing bastard deserved every bit of it.  He found he wasn't sure whether he hoped Cobb would wake up, or hoped he wouldn't.  Shame if Saito didn't make it, though, and not only because Eames was counting on the payout.  He had been not only an excellent and generous employer, but an asset in the dreamscape, and Eames wouldn't mind working with him again.

After they woke up, he had to learn from Ariadne about Arthur's improvised zero-gravity kick.  He silently apologized to Arthur for the "no imagination" crack.

*****************************

Following Inception, they were able to work together on occasion without degenerating into brawls, verbal or otherwise.  Arthur teamed up frequently with Ariadne now that Cobb was out of the dream business, and Ariadne wanted to work with Eames too.  She seemed oblivious to the careful distance Eames and Arthur held between them.

Eames could see that she and Arthur were fond of each other, but he had seen the kiss on the second level of Inception, and that told him plainer than day that there was no sexual chemistry between them. At Ariadne's urging, then, he periodically took jobs with the two of them, serving as extractor or forge, whatever was required.

He never heard about Arthur becoming romantically involved with anyone else in the business, and he didn't ask. He exercised tact about his own escapades, and kept his habitual flirting to a minimum when he worked jobs with Arthur.  Although this careful detente wasn't ever what he had wanted from Arthur, it was better than outright hostility, and it meant they were still in each others' lives in a minimal way.  He preferred that to never seeing Arthur again.

*****************************

Eames woke in pitch blackness to the incessant blare of his cell phone.  He fumbled on the bedstand for it, cursing as he knocked off a half-full glass of melted ice that still smelled of bourbon.  When he found the phone and picked it up, he cursed again: 2:36 a.m.  The caller ID said _Ari._   He rubbed his eyes and growled, "If you are drunk dialing me again, Ariadne, I am going to turn you over my knee and --"

"Eames," her voice was high and panicky, "Eames, it's Arthur, I don't know what to do, please...  Help, I can't...  He won't wake up, and he's shaking, and his heart rate is off the charts, and Cobb made me promise never to go under into someone's dream again, but he looks bad, Eames, and he has _four hours_ left on the timer, please tell me what to do!"

"Arthur knows how to get himself out of a bad dream," he reminded her, but he had already turned on the bedside light and was struggling into a pair of trousers and shoving his feet into unlaced trainers as he spoke.  "Tell me where you are." 

"The warehouse," she responded shakily.  "I went out after work with some friends, and we were out  _really_ late and I didn't realize.  I stopped back here to pick up my notebook, and he was under by himself, alone here, and he was twitching and ... vocalizing, but it's not making any sense.  He keeps trying to shut his eyes tighter, like he has a headache, but they're already closed.  He's hurting, Eames."

He grabbed his room key and a pullover and was out the door and running down the stairs. "Sweetheart, I'm on my way.  You did right to call me.  Now, listen to me. Can you try something for me?  Yeah?" 

She sniffled and took a few deep breaths, but sounded slightly calmer when she replied. "Yeah.  ... Ok. Tell me." 

"I want you to try to comfort him as best you can.  Stroke his hair, hold his hand.  If you can fit without it tumbling over, get onto the lounge with him and hold him, and breathe deeply and slowly.  Your scent will be familiar to him and the bodily contact may reassure him. If you can soothe him up here, it may translate into the dream and help him, ok?"  He covered the phone, and snapped at the concierge, "TAXI. NOW." 

He was in luck, and a cab pulled up in less than a minute.  He slid into the backseat the moment it stopped, and barked out an intersection two blocks from the warehouse.  When he put the phone to his ear again, Ariadne was humming something Eames didn't recognize.  It sounded like a children's lullaby.  He listened silently until she spoke again.  Her voice trembled, but the edge of hysteria had left it.

"It's a little better, he's stopped shaking and speaking, but he's still so pale and his pulse is racing.  I'm lying on the lounge with him."

"Good girl," Eames approved.  "Don't try to talk to me, keep doing what you're doing.  I'm in a cab about five minutes away.  I'll stay on the phone, you just do what you can to calm him." 

It was agony waiting for the cab to drive away before he took off running at full speed for the warehouse, arriving out of breath, his blood zinging with adrenaline.  He unlocked the door with shaking hands and jogged straight back to the area they'd designated for dreaming. 

The sight of Ariadne's petite body snuggled so closely against Arthur's long, slender one, her hand over his heart and her glossy dark hair streaming over his shoulder, sent an irrational wave of jealousy over him, but he reminded himself that he no longer had any right to feel jealousy where Arthur was concerned.  He knelt down next to the two of them. 

He had nursed Arthur through a memorable bout of the flu once, and seen him shot and injured in the dreamscape many times, but he had never seen a healthy Arthur look this bad before.  His skin was pale and cool -- _dehydration_ , Eames' mind supplied -- and his breathing was rapid and shallow. His body tremored at Eames' approach, but his eyes, which were scrunched tightly closed, didn't open. Eames wondered if he was having an allergic reaction to the Somnacin, but when he checked the bottle in the PASIV, it was the same formulation they had used the previous afternoon for a practice run.

Ariadne's round brown eyes were huge and scared, but her voice was even when she whispered, "it comes and goes...  his pulse has slowed a little, but his face, he's so miserable, Eames, please help him." 

"You remember how to give a kick, yeah?" 

She nodded.

"All right, I'm not going to change the time he has left until I know what he's doing down there, but I want you to set a timer for five minutes and give me a kick.  Drop the headrest of the lounge, that should wake me.  A music cue would be nice but isn't necessary.  That will give me an hour down there, hopefully enough time to find him and figure out what the problem is.  If you can stay on the lounge with him and it seems to be helping him, do that." 

He was unspooling a PASIV line and swabbing his arm with alcohol as he spoke. He arranged himself on the lounge next to Arthur's with the PASIV next to him, inserted the needle, and pushed the button.

((((((((((

He opened his eyes again in a monotone cityscape, tall grey buildings and concrete pavement as far as he could see.  An icy wind whistled through the streets. The sky was a sullen, sooty red, with inky clouds boiling across its surface.  The air was charged and stank of ozone, but the only lightning he could see flickered in the far distance.  The security measures on the buildings were excessive, the windows covered with iron bars, the doors heavy slabs of steel.  Multiple security personnel guarded the entrance of each building, and they watched him with flat, unfriendly faces.  He belatedly recalled Arthur's disturbingly effective militarization -- but he also recalled that, once upon a time, Arthur had left a loophole in his mental security for Eames (nothing put a damper on dream trysts like a SWAT team bursting into the room and opening fire, as they had learned to their mutual chagrin).  Apparently the loophole still held true, since the heavily armed guards did nothing but stare as he made his way down what looked like the main thoroughfare. 

He methodically peered into the windows of each building and looked down the side streets, but could see no sign that Arthur was here anywhere.  He knew Arthur was alone, so he was unconcerned that Arthur was being held and harmed in one of the locked-up-tight buildings.  And he wasn't concerned about a trap, because Arthur had clearly planned this little jaunt for a time he believed nobody would be near the warehouse.  Whatever was happening here was presumably something Arthur wanted to have happen, or he'd have given himself the kick by now.  But he also _knew_ Arthur, and Arthur's orderly, exquisite, oddly beautiful dreamscapes, and the ugly, boxy monotony of the scene surrounding him, not to mention whatever the _fuck_ was going on with the weather, was so out of character for Arthur that Eames felt... well, frightened, if he was going to be honest with himself. 

Half of his allotted hour had run, and he had thoroughly covered several blocks of city streets without picking up any hint of Arthur's presence.  The air remained charged and almost pressurized.  Twice, the entire dreamscape had quaked, buildings swaying, the black clouds racing across the sky, and thunder booming in the distance as if the dreamer was undergoing some massive trauma, but of the dreamer himself there was no sign. 

Eames stopped, covered his eyes with his hand, and _focused_ , and when he opened them, a shiny black and chrome Triumph Speed Triple R  was parked just behind him, keys in the ignition.  He used it to more efficiently cover the grid of the city, opening his senses to search for any trace of Arthur. 

Years ago, when Eames and Arthur had worked together exclusively and gone home to spar and eat and fuck and sleep together, they had dreamed together in "training exercises" that were half practice, half play.  Arthur built diabolical, fantastical labyrinths for Eames to find him in.  Eames forged multitudes to distract and disarm Arthur.  Eames called on those memories now, hunting for the tiniest sign of where Arthur was concealing himself.  It was different this time, of course, because Arthur hadn't built this city with the intention of having Eames seek him out.  As far as Eames could tell, there were no sly hints scattered about, no street signs with clever puns, no 'lost dog' notices with Arthur's dream-cell number on them.  Still, there was something, wasn't there?  A very faint pull, like two magnets on opposite ends of a table.  Yes.  He reoriented himself to the north-west, and opened the throttle up full. 

Now that he was attuned to it, the pull became more solid, and he grinned fiercely, sure that he was on to something.  It led him out of the cityscape and through equally monotonous suburban streets, and then out into foothills.  These, at least, were reminiscent of Arthur's usual taste, being lushly forested and green.  The dull red sky didn't change, though, and the sense of tension and oppression grew stronger.

Over the roar of the motorcycle, he heard an intake of breath, and then familiar strains from an electric guitar, and hastily pulled off the road -- re-entering the dreamscape in a moving vehicle was usually the cue for spectacular road-rash if not outright death and dismemberment.  Jeff Buckley's silky, haunted voice had reached the second verse before Eames felt the kick. 

))))))))

"Ari, another five minutes," he said immediately. "I'm close, I need more time."

"He's shaking again, and his pulse is back up, but -- ok, go," she urged, curling back up around Arthur's unconscious form. 

Eames pressed the button. 

((((((((

The highway he was on became a single lane, then a dirt road, and finally he was forced to leave the motorcycle and jog up a narrow lane through the trees.  The air up here was even more dense and oppressive, leaving him gasping and winded by the time he spotted a trace of smoke in the air and followed it to a well-concealed campfire, with a familiar figure sitting motionless on a rock in front of it, staring into the sullen red sky. 

At Eames' approach, Arthur turned around and said dully, "go away," and made a shooing gesture.   

Eames intended to do no such thing, but he found he had difficulty moving the closer he got to Arthur.  The tension surrounding Arthur was nearly palpable; Eames felt as if he was trying to walk through chest-high water. 

"Why did you have to follow me up here?" Arthur asked irritably.  "I thought I got rid of all of you in the city." 

Eames realized that Arthur thought he was a projection, and hastened to disabuse him of that notion before Arthur decided to 'get rid of' him with any of the multitude of weapons Eames was sure he had hidden about his person.  "Darling," he began.

Arthur stood up unsteadily.  " _Don't_ call me that!  You lost the right to ever call me that again."  His hand hovered near his lower back, where Eames surmised he had a pistol tucked away.  Thunder rolled ominously. 

Eames stopped, and put both hands up in surrender.  "Arthur, I'm here because you scared Ariadne half to death.  She found you in the warehouse with four hours left on the PASIV, shaking and muttering and with a racing pulse.  She called me to come find out what you were doing down here, since Cobb put the fear of God into her about snooping in private dreams.  Luckily for you, I have no such compunctions." 

Throughout this speech, Arthur's face lost its dull misery and began to gape in horror as he realized Eames wasn't a projection.  His hands twisted in each other, and he stepped backward several steps toward the edge of the clearing.  Finally, he spoke in a low, pained voice, his brown eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. 

"I came down here to get some time away from you.  I thought... if maybe, if I had a few days I didn't have to be around you, I could get a grip on myself. We've worked the last three jobs together, it feels like you're always _there_.  But even down here, the bells across the river were chiming your name, and you kept showing up, and I kept having to kill you and come further and further out in the mountains to avoid you.  I've been up here alone and the sky keeps getting worse and worse and the air is heavier and heavier, and I've been trying to make the clouds go away, but they're impossible to move, they weigh so much."  His face was pure anguish, eyes squinched shut, and his body was so tense Eames could see his hunched shoulders quivering.

Comprehension flooded through Eames.  "Arthur.  If --" he gestured at the clouds roiling above them, "if these are tears, _let them fall_.  You're hurting yourself badly up there, trying to hold them in.  Please, let go, love." 

Arthur didn't seem to notice this last endearment, as he didn't move a muscle. The dreamscape quaked again, and then a second time, and the ground under Eames' feet _heaved_ and he staggered, but he didn't take his eyes off of Arthur. 

And then the skies opened.  It wasn't a downpour or even a deluge, Eames marveled.  It was more like standing under a waterfall.  He was drenched instantly, as was Arthur.  Arthur's face was buried in his hands and his shoulders were shaking, but the oppression in the air was easing as the water soaked the dreamscape.  The ground beneath them quickly turned to a thick, clay-ey mud, and the tent collapsed. 

Eames squelched to Arthur's side, put an arm around his spasming shoulders, and looked around for a more protected area to ride out the storm.  He immediately dismissed the idea of trying to get back to the city; the dirt path he'd followed to Arthur's campsite was already a small river, and the flat concrete of the city would be flooding, if it hadn't already. 

"Arthur." He heard an unfamiliar note of compassion in his own voice.  "Pet, we need to get out of this rain.  Is there a place we can go?"  He shook Arthur gently but firmly, trying to rouse him from his internal focus.

Arthur eventually raised his sleek, dark head and looked around, seeming to try to pinpoint something.  "A cave," he finally said.  "A little further up." 

With Arthur leading, Eames helping to hold him up, and both of them slipping and cursing in the mud, they made it to a low overhang with, Eames was relieved to see, a cozy hollow tucked into the hill behind it.  It looked like something a bear might sleep in for the winter, but it had a fire neatly laid out in the entryway, and even a pack of matches ready to light it, because this was Arthur's dream and _of course it did_. 

Eames urged Arthur into the hollow while he fussed with the fire, putting off the inevitable conversation about Arthur's revelations.  Arthur didn't show any signs of wanting to kick himself awake, and Eames was damned if he was going to leave Arthur down here by himself again, so it looked like they were going to just sit here in this cave for a while and not talk. 

When he couldn't put it off any longer, he stripped off his muddy shoes, crawled into the back of the little cave next to Arthur and sat, not quite touching him, watching the fire. 

Arthur's dark eyes, barely visible in the low light, were fixed on the flames, and his slim arms wrapped around his knees.  His wet hair fell over his face, the ends starting to curl as they dried.  He mumbled something, and Eames didn't quite catch it.  He tilted his head interrogatively, and Arthur said more clearly, "Thanks."

Eames didn't have a response to that right away.  He settled on, "You scared us," and waited to see what would happen.

Arthur sighed, and turned his head where it rested on his folded arms so that he was looking at Eames.  His eyes were tired and puffy but still beautiful, thought Eames.  He had always thought Arthur was beautiful. 

"I didn't mean for you to know that," he admitted.  "I thought nobody would come, and I could be alone and have some peace, and then go up and be able to carry on with the job.  And never have to say that to you."

"If my presence is so intolerable to you, I'll leave the job at once...," Eames started, but Arthur cut him off, shaking his head.

"I wanted you here, I wanted you to work with us. I wanted to be - around you.  Again.  But it isn't the same, it's just deluding myself."  He paused.  "You were so _angry_ , Eames.  You were awful, and it kills me that you could be like that with me, like nothing we had before was real." 

Eames was astonished.  " _I_ was awful?  You _vanished_ on me. It was like you died, Arthur, when Mal died.  You didn't even tell me about Mal, I had to hear it from that prattling nitwit Giulia!  I flew back here and tried to reach you, but you were already gone. You disappeared without a word, with Dominick sodding Cobb, and you didn't come back, and I had all of your clothes and your books and your paintings at home, I had to box them up and put you out of my life like a dead person had lived in that house with me, and I didn't know why.  And the next time I saw you, you turned around and walked away like we'd never met.  And I _still_ don't bloody know why. I never wanted you to leave, never.  But," he scowled, "I do wish I'd walloped you when I finally laid eyes on you."   

Arthur seemed to have been struck dumb.  Then, without warning, he reached out and shoved Eames.  "Fucker, I wrote you a _letter_ telling you where I was and where to meet me, and why I needed to go with Cobb.  I had to ditch my phone when we left, they were looking for us, didn't you think of that?  All the detail, in our code.  Just for you.  And you didn't show up, and you never answered.  And then Nash said he saw you with some bimbo at a club, and I figured, well, maybe you'd just been in it for the sex, and I couldn't give you that while I was trying to get Cobb back to Pippa and James in one piece..." 

His voice died out as he saw the look on Eames' face. 

"A letter," Eames said dully.  "Arthur, I never got a letter.  I never got one bloody word of explanation.  How dare you think so little of me, that you assume I would just let you go like that." His voice rose, his accent thickening.  "I called and I called, and I tried to reach you through Miles, even, but Cobb was so busy alienating people right and left that no-one would pass a message for me.  I had no idea what bloody third-world country you'd materialize in, you seemed to keep running from disaster to disaster, crisis after crisis.  I tried, love, over and over.  That woman at the club?  She was material for a forge, Arthur, that's all.  I was faithful to you until you cut me dead in Munich."

Arthur shut his eyes tightly, like he was about to trigger another downpour on the dreamscape, and Eames steeled himself for the storm.  Then he opened them again, his expression pleading. "I dreamed impossible dreams, that we were lovers, still," he whispered.

Eames had heard the saying "one's heart skipped a beat," but he had never experienced it himself.  It felt like a fairly accurate description of the sudden leap in his chest at Arthur's words, and his whole being strained toward Arthur, wanting nothing more than to touch him and wrap him up and never let go again.  He gave in to the urge, pushing Arthur's dark hair away from his face, then circling an arm around Arthur's slender shoulders, and Arthur leaned gladly into him.  They huddled, Arthur's head on Eames' shoulder, hands entwined, simply feeling one another's familiar shapes once more.

It was only when it dawned on Eames that he had Arthur in his arms, true, but it was a cold and sodden and shivering Arthur, and that he was cold and sodden and shivering himself, and that they were, not, in fact, trapped in the dreamscape but had a nice warm hotel to go back to, with hot baths and eiderdown, that he realized he had been far more than an hour in the dreamscape this time without a kick. 

"Darling," he murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of Arthur's head, "can we continue this topside?  Ari's been anxious about you, and I'd rather do the kissing and making up bit in a bed than in a cave.  Even," he hastened to add, "a very nice cave like this one." 

He felt Arthur grin into his shoulder.  "You go on up.  I'll follow in a minute or two.  I'd just like another moment here." 

"Are you sure?" Eames looked into Arthur's eyes, trying to suss out any lingering self-destructive impulses there.  He only saw peace, though, so he left it there.  To be considerate, he stepped outside the cave again before neatly placing a shot at his own temple. 

)))))))))

Eames woke to the sound of Arthur's familiar, even breathing, as well as light, feminine snores.  Ariadne's face was relaxed in sleep, her head pillowed on Arthur's chest and just barely drooling on Arthur's shirt.  He couldn't help a chuckle as he disconnected the PASIV, and she stirred and opened her tired eyes. 

"He stopped shaking and scrunching his eyes up, and his pulse and breathing went back to normal, so I figured you'd found him, and I decided not to wake you," she explained.

Eames reached over and fondly rumpled her hair.  "That was exactly right.  He just wanted another minute down there.  Can you call a cab to the hotel?  Pickup in ten minutes at the usual spot." 

She yawned and nodded, carefully untangling herself from Arthur. "Is he... is it ok?"

"He will be.  I'll stay with him, watch over him tonight to make sure."

She smiled, and caught him in a surprise hug.  "I knew you'd take care of it. I'm so glad you came."

Arthur's breathing had changed when Ariadne stood up, and Eames knew from experience that he was awake now and merely feigning sleep.  When Ariadne stepped outside with her phone, he looked at Arthur's face, and those lovely dark eyes, lashes wet and rimmed with red, were watching him.  He knelt to remove the cannula from Arthur's wrist, and Arthur caught his hand and raised it to his lips instead.  "I'm glad, too," Arthur breathed into his palm.


End file.
